[sdiy] Re: Amronpiano

[WeAreAs1 at aol.com]

"danial stocks" <diode at hotmail.com> wrote:

<< a lot, esp from early 6ixties would prolly use individual oscs for each 
key.. at the time, RTL single flip flops were pretty state of the art and 
cost loads [late 60's] imagine trying to implement things like /239 for 
proper TOS dividers? easier to make nice osc for each key if its 
polyphonic..
Dan >>

Actually, to put it a little more accurately, most electronic organs of the 
1960's had one oscillator per note of one octave, and then divided that note 
down through sucessive lower octaves using flip-flops, usually made from 
discrete parts (it only takes two transistors to make a flip-flop for this 
purpose).

These organs would have 12 tuning coils (tunable inductors) for setting the 
pitch of the top octave notes, enabling you to make your organ sound as 
horrible as you pleased!  I found this out the hard way, when I tried to tune 
my 1968 Wurlitzer Combo Organ myself, without knowing anything about equal 
temperament.  This should be easy, I thought.. You just tune the octaves and 
fifths until there's no beating, right?  Wrong!!

Top octave divider chips showed up around 1969 or so, and everyone switched 
over to them immediately.

Michael Bacich